Friday, January 27, 2012

To The Moon, Alice!

Only those of a certain age or mavens of old-timey t.v. show reruns will recognize that comic-hollow threat, oft issued by Ralph Cramden to his wife, Alice, in The Honeymooners. Whether for entirely appropriate and sound reasons or just overdone political correctness, things have changed dramatically. Even two truly great thespians, like Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows, could no longer squeeze a smile out of that classic scene, wherein an overgrown galoot offers his physically petite wife a free lunar cruise courtesy of a right cross, as she icily, confidently, and silently responds with a killer "stuff it, buster" stare. Although other things have changed as well, some things never do. Mitt Romney reminded us of that last night.

One change is that Romney has gotten much better at debating Gingrich. We're told he hired a new debate coach to help him in this regard. I suppose Mitt won't get the pleasure of firing this new service provider, as the results seem to have showed up rather well last night. A particular instance was the exchange in which Mitt effectively ridiculed Newt's lunar lunacy. But one wonders what it says about Mitt that a debate coach was required to arm him for such an easy take down. Still, there is even more to be said about what was revealed in this colloquy. And it may make Mitt want to rethink the debate coach service after all.

Newt's whole pie in the sky moon shot is based on getting private business to take on the project. Mitt responded that he would fire any business associate who approached him with such an idea. He thereby admitted that the private sector wants one thing and one thing only: immediate profit, and lots of it, for the least amount of effort. Time and time again, it has been proven that we are going nowhere as a nation and a people by following that philosophy in our governance. Last night, Romney and Gingrich both stipulated as much, but they are too stupid to realize it. Only "We the people" can do the heavy lifting of moving civilization forward. That is the job of government. Business is something else again.